Prospects for measuring off-axis spins of binary black holes with Plus-era gravitational-wave detectors

Abstract

The mass and spin properties of binary black holes (BBHs) inferred from their gravitational-wave signatures reveal important clues about how these systems form. BBHs originating from isolated binary evolution are expected to have spins preferentially aligned with their orbital angular momentum, whereas there is no such preference in binaries formed via dynamical assembly. The fidelity with which near-future gravitational-wave detectors can measure off-axis spins will have implications for the study of BBH formation channels. In this work, we examine the degree to which the Advanced LIGO Plus (A+) and Advanced Virgo Plus (AdV+) interferometric detectors can measure both aligned and misaligned spins. We compare spin resolution between the LIGO-Virgo network operating at either A+/AdV+ ("Plus") sensitivity or Advanced-era design ("Design") sensitivity using simulated BBH gravitational-wave signals injected into synthetic detector noise. The signals are distributed over the mass-spin parameter space of likely BBH systems, accounting for the effects of precession and higher-order modes. We find that the Plus upgrades yield significant improvements in spin estimation for systems with unequal masses and moderate or large spins. Using simulated signals modelled after different types of hierarchical BBH mergers, we also conclude that the Plus detector network will yield substantially improved spin estimates for 1G+2G binaries compared to the Design network.

arXiv comment23 pages, 27 figures. Updated to match version published in ApJ

References in corpus (97)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
• Advanced LIGO
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• dynesty: A Dynamic Nested Sampling Package for Estimating Bayesian Posteriors and Evidences
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• Science Case for the Einstein Telescope
• Bilby: A user-friendly Bayesian inference library for gravitational-wave astronomy
• Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
• A Comprehensive Study of Binary Compact Objects as Gravitational Wave Sources: Evolutionary Channels, Rates, and Physical Properties
• The first gravitational-wave source from the isolated evolution of two 40-100 Msun stars
• Coalescing binary systems of compact objects to (post)$^{5/2}-Newtonian order. V. Spin Effects
• Observation of gravitational waves from two neutron star-black hole coalescences
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• The runaway growth of intermediate-mass black holes in dense star clusters
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• Coalescence of Two Spinning Black Holes: An Effective One-Body Approach
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms for black-hole binaries with non-precessing spins
• Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: Masses, Merger Rates, and the Impact of Stellar Evolution
• Computationally efficient models for the dominant and sub-dominant harmonic modes of precessing binary black holes
• Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Merging binary black holes formed through chemically homogeneous evolution in short-period stellar binaries
• Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with BILBY: Validation and application to the first LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue
• An introduction to Bayesian inference in gravitational-wave astronomy: parameter estimation, model selection, and hierarchical models
• Towards models of gravitational waveforms from generic binaries II: Modelling precession effects with a single effective precession parameter
• The chemically homogeneous evolutionary channel for binary black hole mergers: rates and properties of gravitational-wave events detectable by advanced LIGO
• Rapid Bayesian position reconstruction for gravitational-wave transients
• A guide to LIGO-Virgo detector noise and extraction of transient gravitational-wave signals
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• Spinning-black-hole binaries: The orbital hang up
• Intermediate mass black holes in AGN disks: I. Production & Growth
• Black Holes: The Next Generation -- Repeated Mergers in Dense Star Clusters and their Gravitational-Wave Properties
• IMRPhenomXHM: A multi-mode frequency-domain model for the gravitational wave signal from non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Are merging black holes born from stellar collapse or previous mergers?
• Analysis of spin precession in binary black hole systems including quadrupole-monopole interaction
• Evolution of Binary Compact Objects Which Merge
• GW190521: orbital eccentricity and signatures of dynamical formation in a binary black hole merger signal
• Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence
• Distinguishing Spin-Aligned and Isotropic Black Hole Populations With Gravitational Waves
• Are LIGO's Black Holes Made From Smaller Black Holes?
• Galactic distribution of merging neutron stars and black holes - prospects for short GRB progenitors and LIGO/VIRGO
• Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
• Measuring the binary black hole mass spectrum with an astrophysically motivated parameterization
• Dynamical Formation of the GW150914 Binary Black Hole
• Spin orientations of merging black holes formed from the evolution of stellar binaries
• GW190521 as a merger of Proca stars: a potential new vector boson of $8.7\times 10^{-13}$ eV
• Spin-Orbit Misalignment in Close Binaries with Two Compact Objects
• Hierarchical analysis of gravitational-wave measurements of binary black hole spin-orbit misalignments
• A Cryogenic Silicon Interferometer for Gravitational-wave Detection
• Measuring coalescing massive binary black holes with gravitational waves: The impact of spin-induced precession
• Including higher order multipoles in gravitational-wave models for precessing binary black holes
• Determining the population properties of spinning black holes
• Reconstructing phenomenological distributions of compact binaries via gravitational wave observations
• Frequency-Dependent Squeezing for Advanced LIGO
• Degeneracy between mass and spin in black-hole-binary waveforms
• Tracking the precession of compact binaries from their gravitational-wave signal
• Use of gravitational waves to probe the formation channels of compact binaries
• Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave catalog
• Measuring the spin of black holes in binary systems using gravitational waves
• Searching for Eccentricity: Signatures of Dynamical Formation in the First Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo
• Using spin to understand the formation of LIGO's black holes
• Implications of Eccentric Observations on Binary Black Hole Formation Channels
• Black hole genealogy: Identifying hierarchical mergers with gravitational waves
• GW190521 may be an intermediate mass ratio inspiral
• Gravitational-wave astrophysics with effective-spin measurements: asymmetries and selection biases
• The Black Hole Mass Function from Gravitational Wave Measurements
• Gravitational-wave detection rates for compact binaries formed in isolation: LIGO/Virgo O3 and beyond
• Fingerprints of binary black hole formation channels encoded in the mass and spin of merger remnants
• Parameter estimation for binary black holes with networks of third generation gravitational-wave detectors
• Parameter estimation for heavy binary-black holes with networks of second-generation gravitational-wave detectors
• Black Hole Mergers from Hierarchical Triples in Dense Star Clusters
• Impact of Bayesian prior on the characterization of binary black hole coalescences
• Detectability of gravitational waves from binary black holes: Impact of precession and higher modes
• A detailed analysis of GW190521 with phenomenological waveform models
• A hybrid post-Newtonian -- effective-one-body scheme for spin-precessing compact-binary waveforms
• A generalized precession parameter ${\chi }_{\mathrm{p}}$ to interpret gravitational-wave data
• Two-harmonic approximation for gravitational waveforms from precessing binaries
• Using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for estimating parameters with gravitational radiation data
• A Bayesian approach to the follow-up of candidate gravitational wave signals
• Spin-Precession: Breaking the Black Hole--Neutron Star Degeneracy
• Constraining black-hole spins with gravitational wave observations
• A new spin on LIGO-Virgo binary black holes
• When will we observe binary black holes precessing?
• Relativistic three-body effects in hierarchical triples
• The hangup effect in unequal mass binary black hole mergers and further studies of their gravitational radiation and remnant properties
• Measuring precession in asymmetric compact binaries
• Eccentricity Estimate for Black Hole Mergers with Numerical Relativity Simulations
• Identifying when Precession can be Measured in Gravitational Waveforms
• Measuring the spins of heavy binary black holes
• A more effective coordinate system for parameter estimation of precessing compact binaries from gravitational waves
• New effective precession spin for modeling multimodal gravitational waveforms in the strong-field regime
• Testing general relativity with compact coalescing binaries: comparing exact and predictive methods to compute the Bayes factor
• Formation of low-spinning 100 Msun black holes
• Investigating the effect of in-plane spin directions for Precessing BBH systems
• A Thesaurus for Common Priors in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Inferring spin tilts at formation from gravitational wave observations of binary black holes: Interfacing precession-averaged and orbit-averaged spin evolution
• Distinguishing binary black hole precessional morphologies with gravitational wave observations
• Hierarchical triple mergers: testing Hawking's area theorem with the inspiral signals
• Waging a Campaign: Results from an Injection-Recovery Study involving 35 numerical Relativity Simulations and three Waveform Models
• Inferring spin tilts of binary black holes at formation with plus-era gravitational wave detectors
• The Missing Multipole Problem: Investigating biases from model starting frequency in gravitational-wave analyses